by Nathan Moore
In honor of Read Write Poem’s first birthday, for our collaborative prompt this week we’ll go back to the first ever Read Write Poem prompt, which was, in fact, collaborative.
Here’s how Dana started that prompt:
Welcome to the first-ever Read Write Prompt. This week, we’ll focus on American Sentences. Some people don’t like the name, but please don’t be put off by it. It’s simply the name Allen Ginsberg chose for this poetry form, which is a single sentence of 17 syllables. You can read more about American Sentences at www.americansentences.com, where Paul Nelson talks about them in detail.
For this exercise, we’ll write an American Sentence. The original prompt suggested collaboration by finding someone on the participant page, emailing them and working together to write sentences back and forth in response to one another or writing a sentence word by word together.
For this post, we’ll see how American Sentences might be combined to form a single poem, with different people each contributing a sentence to the overall poem. If you would like, leave one American Sentence in the comments section of this post. When we post the Get Your Poem On post, we’ll include our group poem at the bottom of that post on Thursday. You can read the result of the original experiment here.
We’re asking everyone to leave an American Sentence in the comments section of this post. Comments will be open until midnight Tuesday (CST).
When it’s time to Get Your Poem On, we’ll have a free day of sorts: You’ll be invited to link to anything you like. If you’ve written a series of American Sentences, you can link to that. Or feel free to link to something in response to one of our other prompts or another poem you’d like us to read. Whatever you want to do. We’re easy that way. And, happy anniversary again. This is a celebration of all you’ve done in the last year and all you’ve made Read Write Poem.
Dark clouds in Payne’s grey, foliage in hunter green, heart in Prussian blue.
The winter goddess will soon descend to seduce our warm, waiting souls.
A single raven flies overhead making a most raucous noise.
Snowflakes trickle from the frozen sky, turning your skin a shade of pink.
You gasp- from me wiping the last drop of perspiration from your back.
Funny how no American that I know would ever talk that way.
The tunnel bore goes deep, but I cannot follow into the darkness.
Hey Mac, find another cab, I don’t go to Brooklyn this time of night.
Sweet: your American sentence – now there’s an American sentence.
The dog of logic chases the cat of truth up the tree of grammar.
Thanks Richard, the American dream starts with the imagination!
and that same dream can end with the sound of shoe leather hitting the street.
Chasing my tail until dizzy, I lunge, bite, howl: I’ve been here before.
On a tired morning the day stretches like a thousand-foot ladder.
tall bamboo shoots sway directionless, taking my dreams too far away from you
illusion shatters the glass of courage, breaking the foundation of wonder
And the cold young man looks old, as he takes another brown paper sip.
Drunk in the power of her memory, I await the morning light.
found fall object: dried snakeskin stuck to a log in the damp wood pile
Reptilian fishnet shed on the way to a hot date with a mouse.
While they dance, her hair falls from its ponytail, light as the summer rain.
seven years of libertine wanderings captured on a hand-made scroll
I watched his back as he stepped briskly into my past and his future.
He turns to throw verbal knives and a sullen look in my direction.
i see your lips sculpting words but I’ve fallen into your deep green eyes
my rhythmed breath beckons me inward to the bright center of my joy
our identity emerges with the choice at life’s first crossroad
Ooops!! I meant to write:
our identity emerges with the choice made a life’s first crossroad
Ooops – Ooops!! I actually meant to write:
our identity emerges with the choice made at life’s first crossroad
His obese mind is an obtuse instrument of wit, a pointless pin.
We fall asleep to the discordant lullaby of his long ass speech.
[...] poem was written for two prompts: Read Write Poem #53 and One Single Impression #39: Childhood [...]